Deeper cuts coming to LSU public hospitals

LSU Board of Supervisors chairman Hank Danos, left, chairman-elect Bobby Yarborough, center, and member Blake Chatelain listen as LSU System Executive Vice President Frank Opelka presents a plan to cut the budgets of seven south Louisiana hospitals that care for the poor and uninsured, including one in Baton Rouge. The board later approved the plan without a dissenting vote. (Advocate staff photo by ARTHUR D. LAUCK)

The LSU governing board backed a plan Thursday to deepen cuts to $152 million for the university-run public hospitals that care for the poor and uninsured, eliminating dozens of inpatient beds, clinic services and nearly 1,500 jobs.

The cuts could threaten access to health care for some uninsured people in the high-poverty state.

The reductions, devised with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration, will fall across seven south Louisiana hospitals, carving out 19 percent of the spending that had been planned for those facilities run through LSU’s Health Care Services Division.

University officials say they hope that services being eliminated at the public hospitals will be picked up by private health care facilities, and that those private facilities will provide training sites for the medical students who currently work in LSU hospitals.Read more at CNBC.com